EMC Ups Their OpenStack Game; Acquires Cloudscaling

There are a lot of deals happening in technology lately around OpenStack. Today marked another of those big days with another acquisition as EMC announced the purchase of Cloudscaling, founded by Randy Bias.

Financial details were not disclosed as the deal is private, but the real heart of the deal comes from what it is that is signified by this, and other moves being made by EMC and other technology giants in the recent 18-24 months around OpenStack.

EMC may not be well known for its open source contribution, but has become more involved in open projects recently. We’ve seen organizational moves such as bringing about former Rackspace Evangelist, Kenneth Hui and many other open technology advocates recently. Even prior to that, many open technologies have been brought in via acquisition, and we have seen open proponents such as Nick Weaver who led the charge to co-create the Razor project which was potentially the first fully open source EMC development.

On October 28th there will be an EMC cloud event which is being teased heavily. This will be well timed with the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Paris the following week from November 3-7. There is a lot of speculation as to exactly what they may bring to the event, but it looks like we will have to wait and see just what to expect.

Who’s Next?

Another burning question with this deal is who may be the next target for acquisition in the OpenStack cloud computing space. With strong players like Rackspace and Mirantis, plus Cloudscaling competitor Piston Cloud Computing, we see that there are more opportunities for companies like VMware, IBM, and of course EMC, Cisco, and HP to exert more purchasing power to ramp up their OpenStack portfolios.

It will be an exciting year ahead as we see the integration of these acquisitions continue, and as more companies make their mark on the OpenStack landscape. If there was ever a time to get OpenStack learning underway, these moves should signal that the time is now.

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